Spoilers Riverdale - Season 3

The season premiere was tonight. The teens reflected on the events of the summer, including Archie's trial (or mistrial). Hiram revealed to Ronnie his motive behind framing her boyfriend for murder, that it was meant to punish Veronica for betraying him. It appears Archie's legal woes won't be resolved immediately but will be dealt with in future episodes, if not the whole season, like the Black Hood arc. I thought, if they were going to lock him up, I was glad at least he'd had a lot of shirtless scenes.

Dilton referenced a mysterious figure he called the Gargoyle King. That scene toward the end was rather creepy as Jughead found two half naked guys in the woods with symbols etched on their backs, as if they were part of some bizarre ritual. Could this cult be linked to the community that Polly and Alice joined?

This show keeps piling on the crazy. That ending with the flying babies was totally bonkers. (Maybe Betty was hallucinating, or maybe that's just what they'll want her to think...)

As usual with TV, the legal stuff was nonsense. There shouldn't have been a hung jury. As Archie's mom pointed out, there was plenty of reasonable doubt due to the lack of direct evidence connecting Archie to the murder. They didn't have to "prove his innocence" as B&V talked about -- his innocence is presumed, and his guilt has to be proven to the exclusion of all other theories of the case. But the words "reasonable doubt" were never spoken in the courtroom, even though it's the standard that the evidence would have to be held to in the jury's deliberations. The only way a hung jury is plausible with such a flimsy case is if Hiram bought or blackmailed half the jury, but that was never mentioned as a plot point.

Also, is it remotely appropriate for a lawyer to defend her own son in court? She's far too close to the case to be objective. She should've recommended someone she trusted and let them handle the case.

I love it that they're still using that Arrow-sounding musical motif for Cheryl's Red-Hooded Archery of Justice.

@Christopher, I liked the previous week's episode better than last night's. It was starting to have a creepy, Halloweenish feel with the Gargoyle King and strange goings-on in the woods.

Last night was more about the Fight Club that inmate Archie was thrust upon and Ronnie's latest business venture. Seriously, these are high school kids and one of them is running a speakeasy? Granted, Veronica said they're not (yet) serving alcoholic drinks, but it ain't a lemonade stand either.

Reposting my last two reviews that I mistakenly put in the Season 2 thread:

Episode 2:

This show just keeps getting more and more insane. So Riverdale's juvenile detention facility is a hardcore, brutal prison? And then the cheerleaders show up and do an Elvis number, and it's conveniently choreographed to give Veronica time to have an angry confrontation with Hiram before she finishes the song. And meanwhile there are crazy cult murders going on and all the gang's parents are involved with some Deep Dark Secret connected to it.

A lot of it was delightfully crazy, especially the song number, but the part that rubbed me the wrong way was the portrayal of role-playing gamers as some kind of delusional, dangerous suicide cult confusing the game with reality. That's right out of the paranoid rantings of moralists toward RPGs when they were first catching on, back when I was in high school. I would've thought by now we would've outgrown those stereotypes and that treatment of RPGs as some scary, alien thing. I don't know, I suppose maybe the show is satirizing old movies/TV that featured such tropes, but it feels like it's playing it straight, and that bothers me.

Episode 3:

Okay, this season is kinda going off the rails for me. I'm so tired of the Illegal Underground Fight Club plot that every show these days seems to feel obligated to do at some point. The stuff with the Farm and the supposed role-playing game (which works nothing like any RPG I know of) is just dumb -- it's crazy, but not in the fun crazy way I'm used to from this show.

And it's weird and incongruous to put a speakeasy under Pop's Chock'lit Shoppe, of all places. That's crossing two very different flavors of nostalgia. And it's very much in the vein of the stuff that shows on The WB and UPN used to do, contriving ways to include music venues as regular settings so they could feature bands and cross-promote their albums. Buffy had the gang hang out at The Bronze, Angel had Lorne's club, Charmed had Piper buy a nightclub, Smallville had Lana turn a classic movie theater into a nightclub, and so on and so on and so on. (IIRC, the UPN execs reportedly even tried to convince Star Trek: Enterprise's producers to somehow arrange for live bands to perform in the ship's mess hall, and thank the Great Bird the producers didn't give way on that one.) Between this, the underground-fight thing, and the evil satanic pseudo-RPG, this is just one cliched plot device piled on another.

There's also a weird parallel with Monday's Arrow. In both shows, the lead character is currently in prison, and in both of their episodes this week, the hero is pressured to hurt someone else but figures out that he can appease the person doing the pressuring by letting himself get hurt instead.

I will give the episode credit for bring back Ronnie, Cheryl, and Toni's stylish black sneaking-around ensembles. It's just so hilarious that they dress up so sexily to go ninja-ing.

When Hiram brought the portrait of Veronica to the speakeasy, my first thought was, "Check the frame for bugs and cameras."

I'm interested to hear what your theory is regarding the Gryphons & Gargoyles RPG and how the parents not only know about it but also think it's a dangerous game. I wonder if there's some kind of a supernatural element to it. When FP tossed the game manual into the fire, Jug and Betty thought that was the end of it, but the following morning, the kids at Riverdale High each mysteriously received their own copy. I can't help thinking the game, as well as the Gargoyle King, is somehow linked to the Farm, which Betty suspects is a cult.

As we have seen that Dilton Doiley died of cyanide poisoning and Ben jumped off the window, perhaps there's a cult element involved in their deaths, but no signs of sorcery or magic. Speaking of which, I'm looking forward to The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix.

I'm interested to hear what your theory is regarding the Gryphons & Gargoyles RPG and how the parents not only know about it but also think it's a dangerous game.

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We're going to find that out in the next episode, where they have the main cast playing their characters' parents in a 1980s flashback elevating the show's Brat Pack nostalgia to a new level.

I wonder if there's some kind of a supernatural element to it. When FP tossed the game manual into the fire, Jug and Betty thought that was the end of it, but the following morning, the kids at Riverdale High each mysteriously received their own copy.

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That's not mysterious. We saw Ethel paying obeisance to the King and telling him/it that she'd made sure the word would be spread. And it's a pretty small pamphlet -- it wouldn't have been hard for Ethel to go to a FedEx Kinko's or whatever they have in Archieverse upstate New York and have them run off a few hundred copies, then lie to Jughead when she claimed it was the only copy.

I can't help thinking the game, as well as the Gargoyle King, is somehow linked to the Farm, which Betty suspects is a cult.

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Easy to think that when Betty herself suggested it at least twice.

Speaking of which, I'm looking forward to The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix.

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Honestly, after seeing the trailers, I think I may skip that. It just looks too gruesome and gory for me.

Okay, most of the Riverdale leads were not particularly convincing playing the younger versions of their parents -- Lili Reinhart in particular looked nothing like the Madchen Amick I remember from Twin Peaks (though I think they did try to approximate Amick's strong eyebrows a bit), and Ashleigh Murray didn't look a thing like Robin Givens until she got straight hair near the end -- but KJ Apa was pretty authentic as '80s Luke Perry, both in appearance and performance.

I'm still hating this whole "The RPG is evil and programs its players to be murderous/suicidal" concept. As a writer, I'm disturbed by anything that smacks of legitimizing censorship.

So Penelope Blossom was raised as Clifford's sister and groomed to be his wife? No wonder she's screwed up.

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It seems like just more Riverdale craziness, but I think there was a time when that practice was fairly common -- or rather, something even creepier where a man would raise a young girl as his daughter in order to groom her to become his wife when she was of age -- and I believe there are some cultish Christian sects in the US today that still basically do things like that, as part of brainwashing women to be submissive baby factories.

The hysteria around the role playing game reminds me of when people accused Dungeons and Dragons of turning people into Satanists or whatever. It was bull shit then and still is.

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Which is exactly what I've been saying for weeks.

The actor playing the young Hiram Lodge was played by Mark Consuelos' son Michael.

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And he sounds strikingly like his father. Still, they only gave him something like 2-3 lines, which suggests he's not an experienced actor (although he does have a few prior credits on IMDb).

It seems like just more Riverdale craziness, but I think there was a time when that practice was fairly common -- or rather, something even creepier where a man would raise a young girl as his daughter in order to groom her to become his wife when she was of age

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I don't recall ever learning anything about that being common, but what you're referring to is called Wife Husbandry by TV Tropes. I think in most traditional/conservative societies, the idea is that women will be "properly" inculcated in the superiority of husbands so that such blatantly icky situations would be redundant, at best.

I hate it when stories about RPGs are written by people who have no idea how RPGs are played. Jughead narrating the whole adventure to the "players," telling them their own characters' emotions and reactions, while they just sit there passively cheering? Uhh, no. The whole purpose of a role-playing game is that the players do their own role-playing. They decide how they react to the events the GM puts before them.

At least the whole "Archie in prison" silliness is over, and the warden gave Archie a lead on how to find the people who framed him and clear his name.

I liked the juxtaposition of Jug and others playing G&G and Archie's breakout. I gotta say, I don't get why Jughead, Cheryl, et al, didn't help Veronica and her friends with the rescue operation, other than it was written that way as a plot device.

I gotta say, I don't get why Jughead, Cheryl, et al, didn't help Veronica and her friends with the rescue operation, other than it was written that way as a plot device.

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It's either that Jughead has gotten in too deep and become hooked on the game, as Betty fears, or that he's recognized that playing the game is the key to understanding the mastermind manipulating events in the real world, as Jughead claims. He thinks it's more important to reach and expose that mastermind, that addressing the root cause is a better solution than dealing with individual symptoms like Archie's situation. So in his mind, the best way to help Archie was to find the one ultimately behind his travails.

I wonder if the Gargoyle King could be this mysterious Edgar Evernever. They've been talking about him and his cult a lot, but we haven't seen him yet.